This occurred through a conflagration of circumstances, not the least of which was the fact that my great-grandfather and his lawyer were both non compos mentis.
My great-grandfather mistook my father for my grandfather and erroneously wrote him out of the will, thinking that my father was a wife beater who abandoned his family, which by all accounts my grandfather was and by my account my father was not.
The will stated that my father should get nothing and that the estate should be divided equally among my mother, my brother and myself. And just to make things really interesting, this occurred just after my parents had divorced. Rightly so, I think that this injustice caused my father great consternation at the time.
Eventually it was agreed that the money should be divided four ways, as any legal action would merely serve to eat up the estate with lawyers fees.
The upshot of all this was that on this day twenty seven years ago I woke up with 17k in the tank, my own apartment and a world rife with possibilities.
I teamed up with my buddy Jim Rogers, who owned a Honda 750K motorbike and a loose itinerary for heading south and west from Vancouver was established. Throw in the fact that my brother had loaned me his passport, which made me "legal" in any number of cultural establishments and the fun was on.
We hit Seattle, Portland, Big Sur, Carmel, Monterey, San Fran, L.A., Newport Beach, Las Vegas, The Grand Canyon, The Four Corners, and The Painted Desert. We stayed in hotels and camped.
At one point, driving through the mist covered morning of the Oregon Coast, I had an epiphany. I was in the perfect moment. I promised myself that I would never forget the magic of this moment, and that if I was lucky, the future would hold more of these moments, but it was unlikely that anything would ever exceed the feeling that I had in that moment. And nothing ever has, but as time goes by these perfect moments do come with greater frequency.
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